Borne Back Ceaselessly into the Past
by shupicorns
Summary: Over a year after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry Potter discovers that his work is not yet complete. He must once again join forces with Ron and Hermione - they travel back in time to 1922 New York, where Voldemort's final horcrux still survives.
1. the best of times and the worst of times

_So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past_.

–f. scott fitzgerald, _the great gatsby_.

_one | The Best of Times and the Worst of Times_

It was not the best of days to be the Boy-well-now-really-the-Man who Lived, reflected the one unlucky enough to bear that cumbersome title as he juggled a stack of parchment with the arm not keeping a similar, larger stack bobbing in the air beside him. He thanked just about every deity ever worshipped, Merlin's pants included, that the builders of the Auror Department had had the foresight to install wide corridors; what with the frequent comings and goings of Wizarding law enforcement, convicts often in tow, and the veritable reams of parchment being whizzed about to and fro, it was difficult to find any free space to walk, even to just pass from one adjacent office to another. Dodging a cup of what looked like lemony tea flying contentedly at great speed at his face, Harry ducked gratefully into his own little cubicle-office, letting the spell go with a sigh and watching with not a small amount of satisfaction to see the the paperwork fall with a dusty thump.

Harry Potter, the one who would have the dubious honor of being forever remembered as the one who defeated Voldemort with the power of love (Peeves, certainly, would never let him forget it), had been spending the remarkably Dark-Lord-free year and a half since the Battle of Hogwarts in a whirl of glory, attention, and makeup coursework, the last one being exactly the sort of unglamorous thing the stories about heroes always forgot to mention. One certainly wouldn't expect the Chosen One in the back corner of some secluded Hogwarts classroom specially fortified to keep out the raging fans, attempting for the better part of ten months re-doing all the things he'd missed in his seventh year, but the fact remained that that was _exactly_ what he was expected to do. Professor McGonagall had been quite insistent, and so soon after Voldemort, Harry wasn't prepared to start making more enemies.

Finding a job-or, perhaps more accurately, an internship-hadn't been difficult. The entire Ministry, perhaps more than a little shamed at their atrocious treatment of Harry during the war, was endlessly enthusiastic in offering him positions in everything from Muggle Liaisons to the Department of Mysteries. The choice, however, had certainly not been difficult; Mad-Eye would probably have executed a ballet-step in his grave at the knowledge that Harry had chosen the path of an Auror (extra hours in Slughorn's office be damned), although nobody-and quite literally _nobody_, apart from perhaps Rita Skeeter, who Harry was convinced had always harbored the hope that everybody's newly-favorite golden boy would turn to a life of crime or scandal-was very much surprised at the news.

Certainly, though, Harry had expected the whole thing to be just a _bit_ more glamorous. Everything seemed to be paperwork for an intern of his caliber; apparently his mettle had to be tested by an unending sea of parchment before he was considered worthy to even begin training. Whoever had decided that the Boy Who Lived was good for nothing but a desk job, Harry decided, might be his first post-Voldemort target, if only to keep him on his toes. Being an Auror was dead boring, and after the first eight months, Harry was _almost_ ready to fall over in a corner and cry quietly in despair. Apparently all the gratitude in the world and Kingsley Shacklebolt's most concerted efforts couldn't budge the steady machine of Ministry bureaucracy, and so Harry was stuck as an intern for what looked like the farthest foreseeable future and then some.

_And then some_ was what he was nervous about. He could picture all too clearly a silver-bearded Dumbledore-Harry with facial hair to challenge even the late Headmaster's, still stuck at his desk, writing yet more forms for _imprudent acts of Dark Magic, most likely under the influence of alcohol_. The upcoming Death Eater trials, scheduled in a few more weeks' time, was his only hope of any interest; he hated the idea of re-living the war and old brutalities, but certainly it was more hope for advancement than he would get quietly pushing a quill around, copying the same things over and over and _over_ again.

Yet it wasn't so bad. The fact was that this new life had a certain sort of peace about it, a charm that for the last seventeen years of his life he could never remember feeling outside of the memory of Lily Potter's arms. It was safety, and if safety and life came at the expense of a bit of action, perhaps that wouldn't be so bad. He had Ginny to come home to and Ron and Hermione to talk to, all the people whom he'd cared about and saved over the years, not all of them alive but all of them loved just the same, and the present was more livable than it had been for a long time.

But, as luck goes, Harry Potter would forever go down in history as the only one with such a catastrophic combination of both the surprisingly good and horrifically bad sort ever to have lived in the universe.

And the universe, everyone knows, gets its kicks out of tormenting Harry Potter.

As Harry sorted the forms into stacks of "important" and "not that important" (the latter being the thicker by far) while simultaneously contemplating the cruelty of the universe with his abundant unoccupied brain space, his eyes fell upon an envelope on the corner of his desk bearing a familiar seal. Suddenly Harry was a giddy eleven-year-old grabbing for the envelope, hands clammy with anticipation. He turned it over, and the words scrawled in green read:

_Mr. Harry Potter_

_Cupboard-Sized Office_

_Department of Magical Law Enforcement _

_Ministry of Magic Headquarters_

_London, England_

Harry broke the seal and opened the letter, finding a message printed with the kind of neat precision that reminded him of Hermione Granger.

_Dear Harry, _

_As you know, I have been called upon to fill the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts for this term, or at least until McGonagall can find somebody older and more qualified. My students are all very bright, and many of them have questions about the subject which I feel that you are more suited to answer. My fiance, Percy, says that as a friend of the family you would be more than willing to come to my class as a guest speaker, but I thought I should write to you myself._

_If you are too busy with your work at the Ministry, I understand. _

_Hopefully I'll see you at Hogwarts, or perhaps at Molly's before then. Send Ginny my regards. _

_Thank you for your time!_

_Professor Penelope Clearwater_

Fiance. Percy and Penelope were engaged? But yes, of course they were, Harry had already known that. He rubbed his head. Keeping track of Ginny on her own was hard enough, but adding her entire family to the equation, Harry sometimes felt overwhelmed.

He reread the letter. _Guest speaker_. He, a guest at Hogwarts? Hogwarts was his home, his only home, in spite of the fact that he now had a flat in London with Ginny. The prospect of speaking to groups of teenagers who still knew him as "The Boy Who Lived" unnerved him, but any reason to return to Hogwarts was a valid one.

When Harry arrived at Number Seven, Cleveland Gardens, his dear Ginnypoo, better known to the rest of the world as Ginny Weasley, Chaser for the Holyhead Harpies, had not yet arrived back from Taiwan, where she was playing in an international tournament. He made himself a sandwich and briefly considered making one for his steadily-more-significant other but decided against it. Who knew when she'd be coming home, after all.

Nibbling at the crust of his admittedly paltry turkey creation, he sat down to compose a reply to Penelope's letter.

_Penelope,_

_Thank you for your invitation. I would be happy to speak to your class. I've been meaning to stop by at the castle for some time, so it wouldn't be a bother._

_How about next week, Monday?_

_Harry_

He read it over a few times, decided that it didn't matter that it sounded a bit stiff (after all, gallivanting about in the wild for most of his seventh year did not lead to good letter-writing skills), and walked over to the windowsill, where their owl, Morgana, was fluffed contently, half-asleep next to the remains of an unfortunate mouse.

"Morgana," said Harry.

The owl ignored him. He was sure it was on purpose. He missed Hedwig.

"Morgana," said Harry, more emphatically.

She looked up and glared.

"Take this to Hogwarts for me, alright? To the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor."

Morgana continued to glare.

"_Please_?"

Apparently it really was a magic word.

When Ginny finally returned, Harry had to use it on her as well. _Women_.

Penelope wrote him back the next day, saying that Monday would be great, and would he mind staying for more than one day?

_Of course_, he penned, figuring that a two-word response would be sufficient, as Morgana was starting to look impatient. He didn't want to risk another permanent scar. It would be nice to stay in Gryffindor Tower, anyway. He and the Fat Lady had a lot of catching up to do.

Sunday evening came round, and Harry was again eating another turkey sandwich alone, this one having been bought at the little Chelsea Deli around the corner because he no longer trusted his own culinary skills. The last sandwich he'd attempted to make (with magic, of course), had spontaneously imploded.

The owl was staring at his sandwich and looking mortally offended. He offered her a bit of crust and she turned her beak away in disgust. Harry sighed. Morgana's range of expressions seemed as limited as Severus Snape's-the only difference was that Morgana carried his mail.

He looked forward to the house-elf-prepared fare of the Great Hall. Limp and soggy sandwiches certainly couldn't compare. He realized that he would be allowed to sit at the Head Table and felt a rather loopy grin cross his face. This was going to be fun.

Harry woke up from a wonderful dream about taking Ginny to a carnival where by sheer athletic prowess, he won for her some violently pink candyfloss that looked like a cloud on a stick. The cloud grew and drifted upwards, bearing the two of them into the sky, continuing to grow until there was nothing left.

It was a good dream, but as the sunlight streamed down on him, he realized that he was eating his pillow. Embarrassed, he looked to make sure that Ginny (who was still peacefully asleep) had not seen him before quickly getting dressed and packing his worldly possessions into a travel bag. As he was packing, he realized that a more sensible wizard would have simply charmed a smaller bag to fit everything, but he was no Hermione Granger.

Anyway, he wanted to take along the broken Horcrux-locket as a visual aid for the class, and he didn't want to take any chances. It was still there, where he'd put it when they moved in. The bottom of the drawer still held a locket-shaped patch amidst the dust when he removed it.

By then it was nine o'clock and Flooing to Hogwarts was a simple matter. He'd come a ways from his twelve-year-old self and sketchy alleyways were bypassed in favor of the familiar honey-colored stone of Hogwarts; even soot-stained as most of the fireplaces were, Harry could still recognize the distinct sense of home that welled up from the hearth. It was probably a special talent of the chronically homeless, one of the things he and the now-departed Tom Riddle had shared. Even the Burrow didn't inspire this sort of recognition.

The office was a familiar one, even with the touches Penelope Clearwater had added. Lupin's grindylow tank was long gone, but the scorch marks from defensive jinxes of past classes of overeager DADA students had never been erased. There was perhaps more fresh air present than he remembered; Penelope had opened the windows and a nice breeze was drifting in. The professor herself was sitting at her desk, back to the fireplace, and Harry brushed himself off and stepped from out the green flames, coughing politely to catch her attention.

"Good morning," he said.

Turning from a pile of what looked to be essays, she gave him a friendly smile and motioned for him to drop his things on the spare armchair by the fire, which he did gratefully. He'd crammed a lot of things in the limited space, and the disorientation that always came with the Floo wasn't helping in the arm-strength department.

"You're here just on time," she told him as he pulled up the chair and dumped his bag on his lap. "I wanted to go over some lesson plans with you before you went in and talked, if that's all right?"

"Yeah, definitely. Was there anything specific you wanted me to mention?"

"The third years are my first class, and they've been learning the basics of boggarts. We've been looking out for any in the castle that could be used for a hands-on session, but for now if you could tell them about your experiences, that would be a definite help, I'm sure."

She went on in this vein for some time. The sixth years were learning about advanced Dark Magic, and Harry volunteered his idea of showing the stabbed locket. After a slight hesitation, Penelope agreed, though she looked relieved that he didn't take it out from amongst his things. Voldemort was still Voldemort, even dead and with every bit of him destroyed.

It seemed that Harry had quite the busy day in front of him, and he hurried to at least drop his bag on one of the spare teachers' rooms (he hadn't known such things existed in the school, but then again, this was Hogwarts) before starting with his talks.

As it turned out, he didn't even have a break for lunch.

Three days later, Harry finally found himself able to spend a blissful hour alone. He wasn't cut out for long stretches of public speaking, and even though most of the classes had been nicely attentive (when they weren't asking him detailed questions of exactly what had happened during every single year of his Hogwarts/Voldemort experiences), he was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to collapse on a bed, preferably at home, picky owl and all. Ginny probably missed him. He missed her, anyway.

Half an hour was spent walking through his old haunts, but instead of lifting his spirits, it only made him feel old. Things had changed with the rebuilding of the school, and here he was, nearly twenty, no longer a student but still feeling as if at any second he was expected to report to some class somewhere. When rebuilding, they'd tried to get the same stone and, magical masons being much better at mimicking authenticity than their Muggle counterparts, had been largely successful, but Harry could tell. There were patches of wall that didn't quite fit, their color a bit too bright, and no amount of charming could make them carry the age that the rest of the castle did. Back when he'd been making up classes, it had been mostly okay; after all, he was still a student at the school, no matter how technically the basis, and the familiarity of routine was enough to chase away the thoughts of _this is where Fred died, where Tonks, where Colin, _if only temporarily.

But now his guilty conscience came back full force and his walk of nostalgia turned into a lot of unpleasant introspection about the wisdom of coming back to Hogwarts at all when his future no longer included it.

Unguided by his frothing, fretting brain, his legs took it of their own accord to Dumbledore's office, although of course it wasn't Dumbledore's anymore; it wasn't surprising, considering the weight the room held for him. Maybe Dumbledore's portrait would help him feel a bit less bitterly nostalgic; hell, he would even take Snape's scathing commentary, if only because it was an echo of the old days. Thinking of Snape reminded him of the Pensieve, and Harry wondered whether it was still there. It was, after all, a highly magical object that the Ministry probably couldn't wait to get its hands on, but there was (probably) no harm in poking around a bit to see. It wouldn't even technically be breaking and entering if he could guess the proper password.

The gargoyle smirked at him (he was probably friends with Morgana, come to think of it), and Harry wondered if McGonagall had ever gotten around to changing the password.

"Acid Pops?" he said uncertainly.

The gargoyle grinned and blew him a raspberry. Apparently not.

"Er. Cockroach Clusters. Licorice Wands. Ice Mice?"

Harry mentally went through what seemed like the entire inventory of Honeyduke's, continually mocked by the gargoyle, with no success. The Deputy Headmistress, it seemed, did not have a fondness for sweets.

"I don't know, all right? Just let me in. Come _on._"

Sighing loudly, Harry turned, feeling his stress levels increase in a manner clearly reminiscent of Uncle Vernon. "Never mind," he muttered, shooting the smug gargoyle a glare. "Couldn't it have been something obvious like _lemon drop_?"

The sudden grinding noise as the gargoyle moved aside to show the door was answer enough.

Robbed of its delicate, spinning mechanisms and the comforting red-gold presence of Fawkes, the office was more of a catalyst for his nostalgia than a cure. But aside from a certain strict quality in its highly dusted corners that he did not remember from his school years, it was still the same office. Head teachers dozed in their portraits and sunlight streamed through the open window. Nobody sat at the too-clean desk, but he could see the Pensieve cabinet, untouched, from where he was at the door.

Moving quickly over to its inviting blueish light, Harry saw Snape's portrait from the corner of his eye. The hook-nosed man was glaring at him in a most familiar way, though Harry considered the fact that he had not yet made any snide comments as a small personal victory.

"Hello?" he ventured, thinking that this was probably as good a time as any to make up for their longstanding mutual dislike.

"Potter." Snape merely glared. "And what do you think you're doing in this most _hallowed_ of offices? Might I remind you that you are no longer a student at this school?"

"Actually, Sn-Professor," said Harry, correcting himself with a bit of difficulty, "I've been helping Penelope Clearwater teach her Defense Against the Dark Arts class-"

Snape, as ever, didn't miss the chance for a scathing interruption. "And what does that have to do with this intrusion upon the Headmistress's office?"

"Catching up on old times?" said Harry weakly.

Considering that Snape was technically dead, and that _old times_ for the ex-Headmaster weren't exactly pleasant memories to be perused through, it might not have been the best choice of words. Harry was nothing if a bit dim when it came to people's feelings.

The glare that was sent in his direction was clear enough, and he hurriedly added, "I won't disturb anything, I swear. Erm." He wasn't quite sure how to correctly phrase _And by the way, thanks for those tragic memories you gave me; they were a really great help in killing Voldemort and I'm really sorry you're dead_, and so he didn't.

Perhaps it was his conversation with the (still glaring) Snape, or perhaps it was only fate, but when Harry opened the doors of the cabinet and let the glow of the Pensieve lighten the room, he found himself reaching for the little bottle messily labeled _Severus Snape_ in his own hand. He'd left it in the office after the last battle, assuming it would be safest there, and the black ink stood out from all of the other faded bottles in Dumbledore's spidery script. He gave the portrait a look but realized that Snape (probably) couldn't see the label from across the room; it was a small consolation, as Harry wasn't sure how Snape would feel about Harry choosing his memory of all places to take a literal walk down nostalgia-laden memory lane.

The memory swirled in the basin like all the others had before it, and Harry took one furtive look back at Snape (still glaring) and gulped an instinctive but unnecessary breath before plunging down into the depths.

Fate had always enjoyed toying around with Harry Potter. It didn't seem to want to stop its games anytime soon.

Again he saw his mother as she was (_you freak!_), playing in the sunlit playground with the scrawny boy watching her. He watched Lily and Severus in the Hogwarts of old and saw them grow up and break up; it wasn't any easier this second time around, even without the doom of _Avada Kedavra_ hanging over his head. There was Snape, older and greasier and crying over the distant body of Harry's dead mother in Dumbledore's too-quiet office.

This time, Harry had more of a chance to explore his surroundings; he couldn't go far from Snape, as they were Snape's memories, but Dumbledore's office intrigued him. There were the mechanisms whirring as always on their little stands, but there were also letters he didn't remember ever seeing before. They looked to be Order business, judging by the seals, and Harry floated over while the conversation between the two men drifted toward its inevitable end. He was still curious about the Order's first incarnation and his parents' involvement in it, and it was a distraction from the sobbing not-yet-Potions professor.

The first two letters were in fact some sort of Order report, signed with Kingsley Shacklebolt's steady pen, but underneath the phoenix-stamped parchment there was a third sheet, plain and slightly ragged. Harry's eyes, drawn mostly to Kingsley's letters, would never have given the half-covered page a second look if it weren't for the very last line.

_Your obedient servant,_

_ Tom_

Tom. _Tom. _There was only one Tom that Harry could think of that would have enough weight to write a letter considered important enough to land on Dumbledore's desk, and the ramifications weren't particularly pleasant. What was Voldemort doing, writing to Dumbledore in the middle of a war, much less using _your obedient servant_, of all phrases? Something in the whole business was smelling most distinctly of rat.

He could feel the hair on the back of his neck prickle and fancied he felt a twinge in his scar.

The conversation was nearing what Harry remembered was its end, and he frantically scanned what he could see of the page; much of the top-right corner and some of the left side was blocked and he couldn't tell the date, but the opening salutation was enough to throw him.

_My Lord_-

Nothing _fit._ Harry was nearly positive that Voldemort would have shot himself with a Killing Curse before calling anybody, much less his enemy once-teacher, anything more than _minion_. And yet, there was the signature. Tom. Who?

He read on frantically.

_My Lord,_

_ All as gone as you-_and here the page was blocked. Harry swore and attempted to bat the offending papers out of the way, knowing as he did that it would be pointless. He was less than a ghost; nothing worked in this place but his eyes.

-_have been put into place_, the letter continued. _The goods have been secured-_

_ -obtained a Time-Turner through Luc-_

_ -nistry suspects nothing. We have planned my departure for the 14th of-_

_ -rcrux set in-_

_ Once all is set, I will contact you in the way we have decided. I will not fail you._

_ Your obedient servant,_

_ Tom_

And still nothing made sense. Harry looked around and wished he could jump into the conversation, as delicate as it was in deciding the future to come, and demand of the younger Dumbledore what the hell any of the letter meant. Dumbledore had mentioned nothing of this Tom or of anything to do with Voldemort and a Time-Turner. Whatever the letter meant, Harry was pretty sure that _rcrux_ was not code for _let's all go and have a picnic by the seaside_. Knowing Voldemort, it would probably end in death or worse.

Even his greatest shouting would have come to nothing, but he tried anyway, alternating between gesticulating wildly and trying to make as much noise as he could. Snape, still tremendously emotional, duly ignored him; so did the Headmaster. Harry had never hated the deaf-muteness of memories as much as he did at that moment.

There was nothing to do but read the letter again. He would, he decided, commit it to memory and demand answers the moment he got back. The calmer portion of his brain, the part that hung out and watched while crunching popcorn as his body went charging on one stupidly heroic adventure after another, reminded him that the letter probably wasn't even important in the present day. After all, Dumbledore would have told him about the Horcrux mentioned in the letter, Time-Turners and strange Toms and all. The plan had probably failed.

Yes, countered the rather less reasonable part of his mind. Probably, but that _doesn't_ excuse my curiosity, thankyouverymuch.

Harry continued to read.

_My Lord,_

_All has gone as. . ._

Too late, three lines down, he felt the memory begin to dissolve as the conversation ended, and shouted ineffectually at Snape's bloody stupid timing all the way until they turned again to Dumbledore's office. But the letter, when the office re-formed, was long gone.

Over the course of his stay at Hogwarts, he returned twice more to Snape's memories, but the repeated re-reads of the letter had given him no more information. Portrait-Snape, having remembered only what the real Snape had noticed that visit in the office, did not recall any mysterious letters, having been rather too occupied with bawling his eyes out on the occasion. Harry very tactfully did not mention that last fact to the portrait, but was still met with a sarcastic look and a demand to _get your backside out of this office, Potter, before I inform the Headmistress of your conduct._ Harry was not particularly worried about McGonagall's wrath, but it was a very clear dismissal, and, for once, he obeyed.

Dumbledore, meanwhile, had been happily asleep the whole time, and the ever-vigilant Snape told Harry upon his first return from the Pensieve that under _no_ circumstances was he to _ever_ wake a Head teacher's portrait; _it is a disrespect_, he'd said very snidely, _that even you would not sink so low to commit. _He'd grudgingly allowed Harry return visits, but after the third trip into the Pensieve, Harry had to admit that he would get no more answers from Snape. The rest of his time waiting for portrait-Dumbledore to wake up (how long _could_ the man doze, anyway?) was spent digging through the rows of bottled memories without much success. There were hundreds of bottles and Harry had only limited break times; the end of the week was approaching and he was pretty sure that he would be missed at home if he stayed any longer. Ginny's wrath was a most terrible thing to behold, and while the other Weasleys and Hermione would probably forgive him a missed visit over the weekend, Harry had enough on his mind without angering his girlfriend too.

It was on the second to last day that Dumbledore finally cracked his twinkling blue eyes open. Harry fervently thanked any deity in the vicinity, for he was getting desperate and stealing time in between classes in the hopes that a fully awake purple-robed wizard would finally make an appearance. His bag was already packed and he'd been thinking of excuses to stay; an obsession to rival his sixth-year manhunt for Draco Malfoy was fast consuming him. He _needed_ the answers to this mysterious letter. Nothing could mention a Horcrux and not be worthwhile.

"Professor," said Harry, immediately after seeing Dumbledore yawn. This earned him a glare from Snape-he could feel it boring into the back of his head-but he ignored it.

"Ah, Harry," said Dumbledore with a cheery smile. "What a pleasant surprise."

"Professor," said Harry again, nodding at the pleasantry but not willing to get sucked into a mire of small-talk. "I wanted to ask you something. It's kind of important."

"Ask away, my dear boy."

"I was going through a memory"-he didn't say _which_ memory-"And I couldn't help noticing a letter on your desk. It said-it was a letter to Voldemort, I think."

The portrait looked suddenly guarded. "Go on."

"This was sometime after he killed my parents. It must've been. I saw the letter and in it there was a mention of some plan, and-" He stopped and looked at the portrait, but Dumbledore's pale blue eyes gave nothing away.

"They were talking about Horcruxes. I'm sure of it. There was a Time-Turner and it was written by somebody named Tom, but it wasn't Voldemort himself, was it?"

Something approaching sadness lurked in the portrait's face. He looked tired, like the real Dumbledore had when talking of that last journey to the cave. It was not a reassuring look, and Harry wondered what in the world could be happening _now. _Voldemort was dead, and yet there was still that fear lurking somewhere deep in his mind.

"Harry," said the portrait slowly, "I had hoped that it would be revealed to you in time, after you recovered from the war."

"But I found it now, Professor. If this is important, I'd rather know it now."

There was a pause. Harry gave the portrait a determined look, and after what seemed like long minutes of waiting, Dumbledore finally began to speak.

"You are aware, of course, that you were Voldemort's unintentional seventh Horcrux. This is what I'd suspected ever since his Killing Curse failed, but what I did not know until the letter was found was that there were in fact seven Horcruxes all along, even before he made his attempt on your life."

Harry could do nothing more than blink. "Wha-"

"The letter, you must be sure, was a veritable trove of information. Voldemort's seventh-rather, eighth-Horcrux was entrusted to one of his Death Eaters, Tom Buchanan, who had disappeared years ago under mysterious circumstances. They had been friends while at Hogwarts, but Buchanan was a few years the elder. The Order had previously been under the impression that he had been killed in Portugal."

"The Time-Turner!" Harry said, almost shouting.

"Yes, the Time-Turner," said Dumbledore. "Do you not see the vanity of it? It is surprising enough that Voldemort handed a piece of his soul to a follower who bore his own hated first name; one can only surmise the great trust that Voldemort held for the other. But to plot to use a Time-Turner to send his Horcrux to the past, a most dangerous experiment, can only show his fatal disregard. He had six others; why not fritter away this last piece?"

"And if he did it right, he would've had the ultimate protection, wouldn't he?" said Harry. "In the past, nobody knows him, and so it's completely safe. And he was planning this all along?"

"Exactly."

"So there's a bit of Voldemort's soul, and one of his Death Eaters, just hanging out-when, exactly?"

Dumbledore smiled one of his twinkling smiles, although Harry couldn't begin to fathom why. This wasn't exactly the best place for good cheer. He himself was beginning to feel overwhelmed, more so than he had ever felt before when Voldemort had been a tangible enemy to see and fight. So soon after the final battle, this was too much. The bloody Dark Lord just didn't know when to give up and stay dead.

"1922, America. A place called East Egg."

Harry, already calculating the best time to break the news to his friends (_yeah, Voldemort's not as dead as we thought; who's with me for killing another mad bit of his soul?_) and to slip away quietly back seventy-and-some years into the past without causing a stir, barely heard him.

"You want me to go back and destroy it, don't you?"

"My dear boy, of course there is no rush."

But, of course, there was.


	2. eggs

two | Eggs

Reserving judgments was a matter of infinite hope. He prided himself on being a nonjudgemental person, but on multiple occasions in his younger and recently-not-so-vulnerable past, Nick Carraway had been forced to admit that he had not followed his father's instructions exactly to the letter.

Gatsby was the problem. Gatsby was always the problem, that enigma of human nature who ceaselessly managed to somehow exceed all expectations while simultaneously failing to maintain any sort of normal human function aside from unrequited longing. Gatsby was not his friend, yet Nick remained in his life out of some vague desire to add flavor to his own.

He wondered sometimes what would have happened if he had made a different decision at age twelve, if he had accepted that letter and moved from the Midwest to Massachusetts. He certainly would not have a desk job in finance and a crazy neighbor who threw endless parties for the rich and glamorous. Nick remembered when the Keeper of Keys from the Salem Academy of Witchcraft came knocking at his door with a second copy of the acceptance letter, not knowing that the intended recipient had gotten the first but chosen not to go. Apparently they did not take rejection lightly.

"Yah're ah wizahd, Nicholas," said the Gamekeeper in his Boston drawl. He had an expectant expression and a handlebar mustache, and looked silly in his mismatched driving goggles and rubber boots. There was nothing magical about him.

"No thanks," said young Nick, small and studious, newly spotty and with his hair cropped close around his ears. "I saw the letter. I tried to send a declination response, but I don't have an owl. Sorry."

"Ah."

It was simplified in memory, of course. He'd narrowed it down over the years to its basic facts (_the offer, the refusal_), because young Nick had known that dwelling too long over unchangeable events only led to worthless introspection. He wanted to do _more_ with his life than magic tricks and sending owls; it was ironic, really. Here he was with no life goals, in a dull office job where the greatest entertainment he could reliably count on was the daily perusement of bond documents. In fact, Gatsby was probably the most interesting thing to have happened to him since he'd turned down the Salem Keeper of Keys. It did not say much for his life prospects.

The man, for his part, was probably more disappointed and surprised than angry, though Nick, being a scrawny sort of kid, thought he looked giantish at the very least and quite possibly murderous (he had been holding his walking stick as if it were a weapon).

It had been mid-August, the dying days of a particularly hot summer. The sun was streaming idly through the windows and the ceiling fan was stirring up dust and Nick had wondered why wizards rang doorbells and wore bright yellow boots when they just as well could have blasted through the door and flown away. The back of his shirt collar had been sticking to his neck. The man looked barely ruffled, wellies and all. Nick had disliked him intensely for it, and was not sad to see him go.

And then began the rest of his life.

Whatever way he remembered it did not change the fact that, at twelve, he had made what had been—and probably what still was—the most important decision of his life. At the time, it had seemed like a good decision. Nick had weighed the options carefully, with all the serious consideration of his adolescent intellect. He had always known that he was a freak, and the idea that other people knew too was mortifying. While other children were jumping at the chance to be accepted, he knew that he wouldn't ever be. It was how the world worked.

No matter. That line of thought was something he did not like to explore, for Nick Carraway had always been better at unbiasedly observing the deepest feelings of others rather than of himself. It had always gotten him into trouble. He liked listening more than talking and it made him freakish; he could do things that other people couldn't ever hope to and was nonetheless spending his days selling glorified money orders.

He smelled smoke and noticed with a jolt that his forefinger had produced a small flame that was cheerily inching toward his stack of accounting materials. In a flash of panic, he dunked it in his cup of coffee (the coffee burnt his hand more than the flame, oddly enough) and looked around furtively to see if anyone else had seen. Of course, the place was empty, but it never hurt to check. He was very good at paranoia.

**_._**

Later that day, he was driving with the sunset in his eyes back home to his little shack when he saw Jordan Baker swerving toward him, horn blaring-never a good sign. He pulled out of the way just in time and she screeched to a halt alongside him, grinning madly.

"See what I mean? It takes two bad drivers to make an accident." Her white hat put half her face in shadow, and she squinted at him through the sun. The grin never left her rouged lips.

"You're absolutely mad."

"But you like it."

"Not when it endangers my life," said Nick without much feeling. They had discussed this a million times before, and a million times they had reached the same dreary conclusion. Jordan never got any better at driving. Nick would add another near-miss accident to his growing list.

She shrugged and leaned back in her own seat. "The Buchanans are having people over for dinner tonight. Care to join me for a Gatsbyless night?"

Nick wondered if his dislike for the man was really that apparent, or if Jordan was just being flippant. It didn't matter, really. Either way, he had gotten tired of the pointless drunken West Egg revelry, and perhaps a boring night with old money would cure his lately-found melancholy. It was unlikely, but Jordan would be there. She was all right when she wasn't behind the wheel. They could get drunk together as sedately as they wished.

"Fine," he said agreeably, a man of few words, and she laughed and started her car without a backward look.

He briefly thought about returning home and changing into a new suit but decided that his work clothes were fine. Office work wasn't much exertion, after all. He smiled to himself and turned his car around to follow Jordan down the road into East Egg.

**_._**

Dinner was predictably dull. Daisy was particularly floaty that night and contributed nothing to the conversation, leaving Nick, Jordan, and the other guests defenseless against Tom's fresh wave of rants about the impending death of white supremacy. When Tom stopped for breath, small pockets of conversation punctuated the hazy air, but it was a dull counterpoint to the clinking of silverware—stocks, bonds, the state of the presidency. Jordan was heatedly discussing some small rule of golf with someone he did not know. Nick did not feel it necessary to contribute, and settled for taking steady bites of his ham.

By eleven-thirty, nearly everyone except Daisy was well on the way to inebriation. Nick didn't usually drink, but when faced with another citation from yet another book with a pretentious title like _The Rising Tide of Color Against White World_, it was more of a self-defense mechanism than an act of indulgence. Things were becoming nicely bleary and the various lounging occupants were reduced to shifting smoky blurs of white-suit-black-tie, but it was clear that Tom was even worse off than he was. The only problem was that Nick's ears no longer seemed connected to his brain, and they picked up ragged bits of conversation like so many discarded playing cards.

"Like the Muggles and Mudbloods," said Tom with great fervor when Nick came up from his wineglass for air. "Kill 'em all before they destroy everything. . ."

Half-asleep and distracted by the sight of the newly-delivered apple tart, Nick's brain nonetheless registered the word _Muggle_ and gave him a metaphorical kick in the shin, a jolt sharper and more bitter than black coffee. Where had he heard the word before?

"Wha'd you say?" His voice slurred the vowels. He was worse off than he'd thought.

But Tom seemed to have trailed off into a different tangent involving a eyesore of a billboard that he passed every day on the way to New York that should be taken down by the government and replaced with something less exhibitionist. The couple across the table were chattering loudly and obnoxiously about their stock futures. Somebody was deriding Warren G. Harding. The room was tilting ever so subtly.

_Muggle_. Keeping his thoughts together was becoming difficult. Nick pondered, but the alcohol was inhibiting his usually good memory and he absently wondered if this was why the Prohibitionists had been so eager to ban the stuff. _Those rum-runners_, he heard vaguely from his left side, but couldn't catch what it was that those rum-runners had been doing. Jordan's caustic laugh cut through the air.

"Muggle." He mumbled it over and over to himself, and his degenerating voicebox dragged out the vowels into something that sounded distinctly New-England. "Muggle _Mu_ggle Mahggahle."

Motoring goggles and yellow rubber boots and an ugly argyle sweater. The man with the skinny handlebar mustache looking regretful and mouthing words through the dusty sun.

_ "All right thahn, kid. Have a noice life with thah Mahggahles."_

_"I will."_

Nick blinked slowly, and then grabbed at the thought like a drowning man upon driftwood, strangely frightened in that sharp clear moment of lucidity that his memory had nearly failed him. He wondered what it meant and why Tom knew such a word, but his mouth wouldn't form the words to ask. When they did they were raspy and lost in the sea of droning conversation.

Perhaps it was his drunken mind making associations where there were none. The man's accent had been thick, after all. He could have been saying anything. Nick had probably misheard. His mind was drifting away again, the word already half-forgotten. The lazy atmosphere lulled his mind into increasingly inebrious musings.

_Why do people who aren't from the Midwest always talk with an accent, while people from the Midwest have normal speech?_

Such were his life choices.

Later that night, when he'd long lost track of time, they eventually dispersed into the expansive garden. The moon was a waning crescent and the stars blurred in his foggy eyes. The chatter was quieter now, spread thin over the Buchanans' innumerable acres of ornamental shrubbery, and Nick, in an attempt to make as little of a drunken fool of himself as possible, shunned all company. He drifted through the rhododendrons and breathed the night air. It was damp. It would probably rain come dawn, something soft and clean, a perfect summer morning shower. For now the clouds sat heavily in the west and did not intrude upon his wandering.

When walking became too dizzying, he sat on the dock, staring at the green light with his feet not quite touching the water and wondering if Gatsby was doing the same.

Gatsby, Gatsby, Gatsby. It always came back to Gatsby. Gatsby's life—so much brighter and more exciting and above all _self-absorbed_—was becoming more a part of Nick's life than Nick's own, and Nick hated him for it.

Something in the green light twitched. Nick looked again, but it was only a green light—a green light overloaded with pretentious metaphorical resonances, if Gatsby's love poems were anything to go by, but a light all the same.

His mind was slipping again. He stood up and went inside to search for coffee.

* * *

**reviews will be forever appreciated!  
**


	3. dinner at the weasleys'

_three | Dinner at the Weasleys'_

* * *

As the front door of Number Seven, Cleveland Gardens closed with a creak, Harry was seized by an irrepressible sensation of deja vu the likes of which he had never felt before. It was not the creaking of door in itself, nor the ominous sound of a storm brewing in the London skies. No, nothing so dreadfully mundane. _This _feeling was this ambiguous rush of apprehension and excitement, of fear and adventure, the knowledge that a mission lay before him—it reminded him of the summer after his sixth year. He remembered, unwillingly, Dumbledore's funeral and his conversation with Ginny that day, of those tortuous months of searching which he knew all too well would come in conjunction with this sensation. A shiver ran up his spine. Perhaps it was only the weather.

Dumbledore always seemed to be the bearer of bad news, even in death. Harry never fully understood how the knowledge and memories of magical portraits operated, but his trust in Albus Dumbledore had never failed him yet; he knew that turning down this quest was not an option. Voldemort's last Horcrux—_why didn't he tell you this before?_ sniped the part of his mind with remembered bitterness—was out in the world, and nothing would be safe until it was destroyed. _Nothing_.

The feeling of emptiness that had been plaguing him was replaced by a strange sort of determination, different now that Voldemort was dead. He wouldn't let the Dark Lord have the last say. He'd spent the seven last years of his childhood fighting Voldemort, and there was no reason to stop now.

He heard Ginny open the bedroom door, and for a split second the only thought in his mind was that he would rather talk to Ron and Hermione at this moment more than anyone else in the world, sequestered somewhere safe and firelit with squashy armchairs jutting comfortingly in the background. It was completely absurd, and shunning this thought in favor of looking upon Ginny in her nightgown, he smiled weakly as she joined him in the front hall and kissed him lightly, leaning forward so that their noses barely touched.

"How was Hogwarts?" she asked, taking him by the hand and pulling him toward the room from whence she had come.

"Wait, let me put my things away," said Harry, and felt another absurd flash of panic. Ginny had never gone adventuring with him; she couldn't be expected to understand what a quest was, a _real_ quest of the sort that moved the blood ceaselessly and remorselessly into one single, suicidal point.

He kept on mundane matters to clear his head, chatting away without really thinking. "—oh, it's as grand as ever, and the first years are still getting smaller as usual. It was weird being on the teacher's side of the Defense Against the Dark Arts room, you know, everything is backwards."

Harry took off his tie slowly so as to avoid making eye contact with Ginny. She could always tell when something was wrong, and he was sure that it was his damned Lily-inherited green eyes that betrayed him every time. "Oh, and you know those theories we always had about the Head Table food being better? We were wrong, they don't even have pudding like usual, it's all health food and. . ."

Ginny, wits as quick as a spreading Fiendfyre, caught hold of Harry's half-undone tie and pulled him down to her eye level (which was, admittedly, not very far from his full standing height, as Harry was hardly more than an inch or two taller than her). "Harry. What did you see there? Is Professor McGonagall okay?"

"No, it has nothing to do with her, she's doing great. The title Headmistress really fits her, you know, she always had a knack for bossing the other teachers around, and you wouldn't _believe _what she's done to Dumbledore's office—"

Bad move. He'd mentioned Dumbledore's office and couldn't keep from hesitating guiltily, Ginny's sharp brown eyes boring into his own.

"Then what is it?"

Harry bit the inside of his cheek. "Nothing. Really."

Sheer amounts of experience should have taught him that a Weasley, especially particularly fiery Weasleys named Ginevra, could never be placated with an excuse so lame as _Nothing_. Experience should have taught him, but Harry had refused to listen, and to his dismay Ginny was beginning to look annoyed. Gone was the sleepy nightgowned vision he'd come home to; she was resembling her mother in a fit of temper more each second, and the tie in Harry's fingers decided that it was a good time to slide onto the floor and take cover under the bed.

"Harry. I can tell when you're lying to me, you know. I'm not _blind_."

Oh, Merlin. He'd really made a mess of things up now._ Shit. _What had Hermione always said was the key to getting girls to like you? Had Hermione ever even said anything like that? He couldn't remember. The golden days of Hogwarts were such a long time ago.

A rambly and grovelling apology was already on the tip of his tongue when she sighed and cut him off. "Mum's invited us over to dinner tonight," she said, and shook her head when he tried again to say something. "No. Keep your bloody secrets if you need to. I've already owled her back to say we're going. No questions."

Harry breathed an internal sigh of relief. At least she'd be off his back for a little while. He felt guilty even thinking such a thing, but the fact remained that life after the war was more constricting than he'd ever thought it would be. He loved her, but Ginny didn't understand and that was it.

The thought of dinner cheered him, even though the Burrow had grown strained since Fred's death. Ron and Hermione would be there for sure, and finally he would be able to talk.

**_._**

"Oh, Harry, it's so wonderful to see you!" sighed Mrs. Weasley when they entered the Burrow's kitchen just as the sun was starting to go down. She looked as if she wanted to wrap them both in a hug, but was distracted with conducting a complicated series of wand-maneuvers to keep the pot boiling and the potatoes peeling at the same time. Using the time it took for her to greet Ginny as a further distraction in his favor, Harry slipped discreetly away, his quick reflexes keeping him just out of Ginny's snapping snatch at his forearm. He felt vaguely guilty, but it didn't stop him from making his way upstairs to find Ron and Hermione.

He found them after a bit of searching out in the back, setting up the dinner tables and silverware. Hermione was stretching a tablecloth over one of the tables, guiding it with her wand, and they were laughing over something when he came across the lawn, awkward as usual.

"Harry!" said Hermione, flicking her wrist and letting the cloth settle gracefully down before skipping over to meet him.

Ron, for his part dumped his load of forks and knives, grinned widely, and gave Harry a punch on the shoulder. "Hi, mate. Where've you been hiding for all of October?"

It really was only the seventeenth, and Hermione reminded Ron of this fact, and Ron shrugged and said, well, it's more than half of the month over, isn't it, and Hermione was forced to agree. Harry laughed at their banter and wished they could fall again into the easy camaraderie of Hogwarts-graduated friends, complaining about work and the economy and whatever normal young adults did with their normal lives.

"You're awfully quiet, Harry," said Hermione, giving him a look much like Ginny's. He was almost relieved she'd noticed; it saved him the trouble of bringing it up himself. It made him less guilty about destroying the perfect golden afternoon they otherwise could have had.

"Yeah," he said, and then repeated himself. "Yeah. Something's come up."

"'Come up'?" Ron asked, mocking Harry's failed attempt at casualness. "I swear, if Bellatrix Lestrange made her own Horcruxes I'm gonna—"

"You're close, actually."

"Shit. Well, let's have it, then."

Harry looked from Ron to Hermione, from Hermione to Ron, and then at the ground. At least this was easier than revealing the existence of the Horcruxes to them in the first place, right? At least the three of them wouldn't have to worry about keeping up with schoolwork in addition to the research they (and by _they_, he really meant Hermione) would undoubtedly put in. At least this time he didn't have some sort of misguided teenage notion that he had to go it alone. He knew that they would be there for him—perhaps that was the only lesson he remembered from his Hogwarts years, looking back. Time and time again, they would refuse to let him face his trials without them by his side. And anyway, they'd never let him live it down if they weren't there and he failed.

(Well. There was that, and then the fact that a ghost is an imprint of a departed soul. Two lessons, really.)

"Well, you know how we thought that there were six Horcruxes, and then a seventh unintentional Horcrux—"

"That one was you, right?"

"Yes, Ron. Anyway—"

"Sorry, mate, you know how long it's been, and all that mindbendy stuff at the end of the battle got me sort of confused, especially when we thought you were dead, I mean, that was awful. Wait, was the Horcrux in your brain? I forget. . ."

Ron saw the look on Hermione's face and promptly shut up.

"_Anyway_," Harry continued, "Long story short, there's still one left. An extra, a seventh intentional Horcrux that Voldemort"—he was impressed when neither of them cringed and went on, rushing his words—"made as a security device, so that even if we found and destroyed all the others, he wouldn't be completely gone from the world. And he isn't—or, wasn't—or—it's complicated, you see, because he sent that Horcrux back in time with one of his Death Eaters, to where nobody would even know about him. . .

"And we have to finish this."

The two of them responded simultaneously with very different questions that just happened to have the same number of syllables:

"Back in _time_?"

"What the _fuck_?"

Hermione duly ignored Ron and started to pry for details, the gears in her mind clearly spinning already at speeds twice as fast as Harry's rusty post-Hogwarts mind machinery ever could hope to aspire. "Who told you this? How do you know they were reliable? You know, don't you, Harry, that this sounds like some hoax put on by some ex-Death Eater to get rid of you?"

Harry admitted that he had not considered that it could have been a trick, and would have felt sheepish (again) at how easily Hermione's reasoning processes could counter his own, except that he had seen the letter in a memory, and the portrait of Dumbledore himself had told him so. It was his trump card, and then he hastily had to explain that no, he didn't actually have the letter, you can't take tangible things out of memories—and no, Dumbledore didn't seem bored at all in his manifestation on the office wall; in fact, he was probably enjoying his portrait-self.

"Plus," he said, "I don't think they could have modified that memory; I would've noticed. Also, you can't hex the portraits inside of Hogwarts, at least I don't think you can. _Snape_ was definitely being grumpy enough to be genuine."

Hermione considered the evidence for a moment, tablecloth completely forgotten.

"How far back in time are we talking?"

"1922, according to Dumbledore."

**.**

After hastily setting up the rest of the cutlery—even Hermione seemed distracted and didn't bother with her usual neatness, while Harry and Ron threw things every which way in a glittering heap that barely resembled place settings—they retreated to Ron's room, where Ron assured them they would have at least a quarter-hour's worth of time to talk before Mrs. Weasley came looking for them.

"She'll think we've gone to the village or something, you know," he said sagely as they navigated the stairs. "And either way she's not going to be as haggish as she was during the wedding. We'll get a bit of peace up here."

Despite the fact that Ron was no longer in residence for most of the week, the room remained more or less how Harry remembered it; most of the Chudley Cannons posters had stayed on the wall—Harry assumed that Hermione was under no circumstances going to allow as much Quidditch paraphernalia as Ron had into the flat they shared together—and everything was still reassuringly orange, a perfect clashing counterpoint to Ron's hair as he sat down heavily on the dusty bedspread. The tank of frog spawn was gone, but there was still a pile of comics and what looked like a disused _One Hundred Magical Herbs and Fungi_ left open on the desk. Harry sat down next to Ron, and Hermione pulled up a flimsy (orange, emblazoned with a familiar logo) stool to regard them with the caustic glare she reserved for particularly gripping academic circumstances.

"Well?" she said, and made Harry recount again in greater detail what had happened during his time in the memory.

"—and Dumbledore told me it was in a place called east Egg," he finished.

A low whistle emanated from Ron. "Blimey, I always knew Dumbledore was off his rocker, and now he's gone and not told you something this important for _years_. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?" Seeing Harry's look, he quickly added, "But it's pretty obvious what we have to do."

"Go back, yeah," said Harry.

Hermione shook her head. "I'm sure Dumbledore had his reasons, Ron, and as for you, Harry, are you sure you didn't misunderstand him? There was a _reason_ he didn't tell us about this Horcrux. It could be all solved now."

"It isn't. I know it isn't. He didn't sound like he was talking about a completed mission, Hermione. You weren't there. We need to get a Time-Turner and go back."

"But there's something I'm sure you haven't thought of." There was a look on her face that resembled a triumphant cat, and Harry was briefly and inexplicably nervous. "Just think for a moment. Voldemort is dead."

She looked expectant, and Harry and Ron both stared at her mutely.

"Come on," said Hermione. "_Think_. Why did Voldemort die?"

"Because we destroyed his Horcruxes," said Harry slowly and sharply, wondering where this conversation was going.

"Exactly! And what logically follows?"

Harry stared at her.

There was a silence and Hermione, exasperated, sighed loudly and was about to answer when inspiration struck in the most unexpected quarter.

"Merlin's _pants_," said Ron of all people, looking like he'd just been hit by the Hogwarts Express. "We destroyed them all, but we didn't destroy the one he hid, but he's still _dead_." He grinned helplessly at Harry's despairing look. "Actually, it doesn't make sense at all. Explain, yeah, Hermione?"

She shot a quick proud glance at Ron (Harry felt oddly slighted) before continuing. "Ron's actually right—how _could_ you have destroyed Voldemort if his eighth Horcrux had been alive? It doesn't make sense to assume that it was still intact when you fought him."  
"But—" said Harry, suddenly unsure. He had seen Voldemort die completely from the force of his own rebounding curse, and unless he was roaming the Albanian forests again as a spirit, there was no reason to think that he was still alive. Harry had killed him for the last time. It had the feeling of closure to it. Voldemort was dead. Harry had killed him.

"Which _means_," said Hermione, interrupting his convulsing thoughts, "that Dumbledore must have gotten somebody to go back and destroy the Horcrux before our seventh year. Which means that it's all over. You don't need to go looking for trouble, Harry," she added in a gentler tone. "You can have a life without Voldemort always looming over you."

"D'you think I _want_ to look for Voldemort?" sputtered Harry, angry in a way he hadn't been since fifth year at her pity. "This is _real_, Hermione; this is something I need to do—Dumbledore wants it, I know he does."

"I don't think Time-Turners can go back seventy years," countered Hermione. "Each spin is an hour and we'd lose count before we made it."

"We'd work something out," said Harry, trying to sound reasonable and failing. "Look, do you want me to prove it? I'll bring you both into the memory with me. We can go to Hogwarts."

"It's not that I don't believe that you believe it. It's just that it's such a _ludicrous_ idea! Why would an eighth Horcrux turn up now? It's illogical."

"No need for both of you to get angry over it," said Ron reasonably.

"I'm _not_ getting angr—"

He was working himself into quite the fury (and thus into a rather dirty liar) when Ginny of all people suddenly appeared in the doorway with a swish of flame-red hair, completely derailing his thoughts and reduced his building rant into something approaching "Buh?"

"Mum says dinner's ready," she said, and then looked quizzically at Harry. "I heard shouting. What's up?"

"N-nothing," said Harry quickly, seeing Hermione open his mouth to explain.

Ron nodded dismissively. "Yeah, Gin. Just discussing old times and all. You know. The three of us."

Ginny's lips thinned into a bloodless line and Harry again felt the anxiety of their earlier conversation return. She would never be able to understand what they were talking about—if only she didn't need to feel so left out all the time! They weren't insulting her. It was just. . . things they needed to talk about.

"I can see I'm not wanted here," she said angrily, glaring at Harry most especially. Which was weird, Harry thought, because wasn't it Ron who had insulted her?

"No, no, it's not like that." His mouth moved of its own accord, perhaps retaining some sense of self-preservation that his conscious mind lacked. "Ginny—"

But she was already pounding down the stairs alone.

_._

Dinner was an awkward affair, with both Hermione and Ginny shooting him death glares, although (he hoped) for different reasons. Mrs. Weasley, oblivious, carried on the conversation while Mr. Weasley asked Harry if he enjoyed his Ministry work and whether he would ever transfer to the Muggle Affairs department as there was definitely an opening he could keep open, to which Harry was forced to politely affirm that yes, he was enjoying things, and that no, he was all right where he was. They were both lies, but at least talking to Mr. Weasley kept his attention from the two women plotting his downfall.

While they were clearing dishes, Hermione sidled over to him with a dishcloth and hissed into his ear, "I won't even go into how you just treated Ginny except to say that you are so _dense_ sometimes," to which Harry was about to hotly deny sotto voce when she hushed him and continued.

"If you can write me what you remember of the letter," she said, "I'll look over it and think for a bit. I still don't believe you, but a bit of research can't hurt."

"Yeah, definitely," said Harry, relieved that he was getting even such a tiny window of welcome. "We could go see the Pensieve if you want."

"I haven't the time. Write what you can remember and we'll go from there."

"So we _are_ going Horcrux-hunting?" said Ron in Harry's ear, shooting a discreet look toward the table to make sure that none of the other Weasleys were in hearing range.

"No," said Hermione bluntly. "I'll need to research this thoroughly before we even think about any decisions."

"So we _are_ going?" said Ron again, grinning broadly.

"Research, Ronald," said Hermione in exasperation, which was about as much of a yes as Hermione was ever going to give, skeptic that she was. "And I expect you two to help me."

Despite the added workload that he knew would follow, Harry couldn't help but fist-pump the air, but only later, in private, when he was sure that Hermione wouldn't see. It was like a sixth sense of something. He could smell an adventure coming on.

* * *

**as ever, reviews are love. they help keep fitzgerald's ghost from hunting us down for butchering his canon!**


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